# The layers of The Stack

> Every part of a system, from the edge to the business tools, with the tools Nicolas Dao uses or avoids in each (Cloudless Labs, Sydney). Each link is that layer's file: every tool by verdict.

- Web page: https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/

- [Edge](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/edge/index.md): Between your users and your backend. Tools: Astro on Cloudflare Workers, Cloudflare Durable Objects, Cloudflare Turnstile, Cloudflare Workers, Next.js on Cloudflare Workers (OpenNext).
- [Compute](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/compute/index.md): Where business logic runs. Tools: Fargate scheduled tasks, Lambda container images, Lambda Web Functions, AWS Lambda.
- [APIs, queues and events](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/api-events/index.md): How requests and events move. Tools: API Gateway, GraphQL and AppSync, Amazon EventBridge, Amazon Data Firehose, AWS IoT Core, Amazon Kinesis, Lambda durable functions, Lambda function URLs, Amazon SNS, Amazon SQS, AWS Step Functions, Cloudflare Queues.
- [Data](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/data/index.md): Databases, migrations and the data lake. Tools: S3 + Glue + Athena, Aurora PostgreSQL, AWS Database Migration Service, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon OpenSearch, Cloudflare D1, Cloudflare Hyperdrive, DuckDB, Neon (serverless Postgres).
- [AI](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/ai/index.md): Models, embeddings and agent access. Tools: Anthropic API (for client systems), Amazon S3 Vectors, Cloudflare AI Gateway, Cloudflare Sandbox, Cloudflare Workers AI, Self-hosted MCP servers, OpenRouter, pgvector.
- [Email](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/email/index.md): Transactional and marketing. Tools: Amazon Pinpoint, Amazon SES, Postmark, Resend.
- [Storage and delivery](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/storage/index.md): Files, websites and CDNs. Tools: Amazon CloudFront, Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Cloudflare static hosting.
- [Observability](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/observability/index.md): Logs, metrics, alarms. Tools: Amazon CloudWatch.
- [Infrastructure as code](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/iac/index.md): If I can't provision it, it loses points. Tools: AWS CloudFormation, GitHub Actions, Pulumi, Terraform / OpenTofu.
- [Networking and hosting](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/network/index.md): Private access, exposure, DNS, servers. Tools: Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared), Route 53 and Cloudflare DNS, Hostinger VPS, Tailscale.
- [Accounts, identity and cost](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/accounts/index.md): The AWS foundation. Tools: AWS Backup, Amazon Cognito, Cost Explorer (with Claude Code), AWS Organizations + IAM Identity Center, Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, Better Auth.
- [Build and test](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/dev/index.md): How the code gets written and checked. Tools: Claude Code, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Atlassian, Node.js (plain JavaScript), OpenAI Codex, Stryker mutation testing, Playwright, Vitest, pytest, TypeScript.
- [Business tools](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/business/index.md): Payments, analytics, the daily kit. Tools: Dashlane, PostHog, Jira, Asana, Monday.com and heavy project-management software, Slack, Stripe, Trello.
- [Platforms](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/layers/platforms/index.md): The clouds I don't pick. Tools: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Windows and the Microsoft stack, Netlify, Vercel.

## Related

- [Every use case](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/use-cases/index.md)
- [Every tool, A to Z](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/tools/index.md)
- [The whole stack in one file](https://cloudlesslabs.com/stack/brief.md)
- [Map of every Markdown file on cloudlesslabs.com, with what each one answers](https://ask.cloudlesslabs.com)